Wednesday, January 27, 2010

It's been over a week since I posted the "wrap-up" thoughts from Day One of our 48-hour WAM weekend. So I think it's time I provide some follow-up "event wrap-up" thoughts and comments.
First, let me say that I had every intention of blogging more during the event. But after 40 hours of head-down programming and a few hours of sleep, the mental clarity to blog drifted away. Hopefully you kept-up with the action on the Telerik Facebook page where I posted some exclusive video updates. One update in-particular captures the hazy sensation of developing on a lot of junk food and little sleep!
Team Telerik did an incredible job, though. I set an ambitious set of goals for 48-hours of requirements gathering/planning/design/implementation, and the team rose to the challenge. It helped that our charity, We Help Ourselves (new website will be live very soon), also had ambitious requirements. In a single weekend, we delivered a platform that empowers their non-technical staff members to completely control the WHO website- from page content to email templates- while simultaneously automating two of their most critical business processes. Like I said: ambitious.
We owe much of our success to the Sitefinity platform and OpenAccess. These tools gave us the head-start we needed to focus on development instead of infrastructure.
In fact, Sitefinity powered many of the weekend's charity website re-builds. No fewer than 10 teams (out of 20) used Sitefinity, and all seemed to achieve high degrees of success. I think there were even a few teams so discouraged by their first CMS platform choice that they switched to Sitefinity half-way though the weekend. That means they built their sites in just 24 hours!
Needless to say, it was an exhausting event, but well worth the effort. I will be blogging over the next few weeks in more detail about the process we used to achieve success in 48 hours, which will hopefully produce some guidance that will help you be successful on your next project- which you hopefully have more time to complete!
Want to try your hand at this event and give back to your local community? Look for a Give Camp near you (only Dallas- the original- uses the We Are Microsoft name) and get involved. If you use Sitefinity, let us know so we can feature your story and results!

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Telerik Watch is dedicated to previewing, reviewing, and demoing the .NET UI controls and developer tools from industry leading vendor, Telerik, and to keeping you up-to-date on the most important news in the .NET community.Subscribe in a reader now.

About Todd Anglin

To avoid sounding creepy, I won't describe myself in the 3rd (or even 4th) person. I am Telerik's Chief Evangelist and general all around "community guy." I started this blog as a customer, before joining the company, and now enjoy the best job in the world- helping deliver the good news of Telerik to people around the world and helping Telerik build cool, useful products. I am President of the North Houston .NET User Group, an O'Reilly author, and a Microsoft MVP.